London 2012: IOC suspends ticket sales for 2014 during investigation

The IOC has begun an investigation into the black market sale of London 2012 tickets and is concerned about sales for Sochi 2014. Photograph: Locog/PA

The International Olympic Committee is to suspend the sales process for the Sochi 2014 Winter Games while it investigates allegations that Olympic officials and agents representing 54 countries offered London 2012 tickets on the black market.

In the wake of a Sunday Times investigation that sparked an immediate IOC probe, it is understood that the process of approving the list of Authorised Ticket Resellers contracted by the Sochi organising committee has been suspended until after it reports. The investigation is expected to lead to a shake-up of the way Olympic tickets are allocated ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympics.

The London 2012 organising committee chairman, Lord Coe, said the revelations were "deeply depressing", especially after he had warned the Association of National Olympic Committees of the risks of breaking IOC rules on the resale of tickets at their general assembly in Acapulco in 2010.

The Sunday Times, which is expected to hand its dossier of evidence to the IOC this week, alleged that 27 agents representing 54 countries were prepared to sell thousands of tickets for up to £6,000 each.

Spyros Capralos, the president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee who was implicated in the illicit sale of tickets to undercover reporters, claimed the allegations were "untrue and misleading".

"The whole process was totally transparent and in accordance with the laws of the Greek state," the HOC said in a statement. "Therefore, there can be no issue on creating a 'black market' by the HOC which did not buy any tickets, whatsoever."

The HOC also claimed that quotes attributed to Capralos were "fragmentary and a patchwork of answers, made in a way that served the authors of the article".

It added: "The journalists of the Sunday Time, violated all principles of journalistic ethics, pretended to be representatives of a ticket selling company, and had even created a fake webpage."

It said that its entire allocation had been signed over to a company controlled by the Ipswich Town owner, Marcus Evans, so it did not have any tickets to sell.

Evans paid €300,000 – 10 times more than the HOC received during the Beijing Games – for the exclusive rights to resell the tickets but it said all the money went towards team preparation.

"The whole sum was exclusively allocated to the preparation of Olympic athletes of top level, at a time when, due to difficult economic conditions, the state stopped funding the Olympic preparation," it said. They claimed that the conversation with The Sunday Times journalist referred to the Sochi Games.

The former Olympic swimmer Yoav Bruck, authorised to sell tickets in Israel and Cyprus, also denied allegations that he offered undercover reporters the best seats in the house at the 100m final.

"The report is swamped with untruths, lies and inventions that cries to the heavens," he told Israel's Channel 2 TV. "I am saying that we are clean … we are not selling anything we are not allowed to."

London 2012 organisers will continue to lobby to return any unsold tickets from the 1.1 million allocated overseas to the British public. They claim that more than 50% of unsold tickets have already been re-routed for UK sale, the first time that has happened. But they will not seek to requisition tickets already allocated to the regions implicated, for fear of disadvantaging genuine purchasers in those regions.

Denis Oswald, the head of the IOC's co-ordination commission and a member of the executive board that held an emergency meeting in response to the claims, has said anyone found guilty of breaking IOC rules should be expelled from the Olympic movement.

"If you know you are breaking the rules and still do it, it is unacceptable. It is an attitude which is not acceptable and which is why I am sure the IOC want to take this very seriously and take appropriate sanctions," he said.

The IOC ethics commission is highly unlikely to report before London Games, although interim action could be taken against a handful of individuals in the meantime.

The report was the latest in a string of similar allegations. In May, a top Ukrainian Olympic official resigned following allegations that he offered to sell tickets for the London Games on the black market.

Volodymyr Gerashchenko, secretary general of Ukraine's national Olympic committee, was accused by the BBC of telling an undercover reporter posing as an unauthorised dealer that he was willing to sell up to 100 tickets for cash.